Inheritance

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"Powell's poems are full of lively vignettes in which realism strikes lyrical sparks off harshness ."—The Times Literary Supplement

"Her work draws in the reader with anecdotal verve of good short stories and transfixes with exacting imagery"— The Harvard Review

"This remarkable debut collection isn't light reading: the dark pulse driving it is family history as trauma and the devastating legal of war. But its tight rhythms, startling images and vivid, arresting turns of phrase make it utterly compelling"—The Toronto Star

The Lifeboat

All night in his lifeboat my father sang
to keep the voices of the other men
who cried in the wreckage from reaching him,

he sang what he knew of the requiem,
of the hit parade and the bits of hymns,
he sang until he would never sing again,

scalding his raw throat with sea-water
until his ribs heaved, until the salt
wept from his eyes on dry land,

flecked at his lips in his squalling rages,
streaked the sheets in his night sweats
as night after night the reassembled ship

scattered its parts on the shore of his bed,
and the lifeboat eased him out again
to drown each night among singing men.

Inspired by a shipwreck endured by her father during the Second World War, and by his struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and eventual suicide, Inheritance is a powerful poetic debut by the winner of the 2013 Boston Review Fiction Contest and The Malahat Review Far Horizons Award.